Elderly care, or simply eldercare (also known in parts of the English-speaking world as aged care), serves the needs of old adults. It encompasses assisted living, adult daycare, long-term care, nursing homes (often called residential care), hospice care, and home care.

Elderly care emphasizes the social and personal requirements of senior citizens who wish to age with dignity while needing assistance with daily activities and with healthcare. Much elderly care is unpaid.

Elderly care includes a broad range of practices and institutions, as there is a wide variety of elderly care needs and cultural perspectives on the elderly throughout the world.

The form of care provided for older adults varies greatly by country and even region, and is changing rapidly. Older people worldwide consume the most health spending of any age group. There is also an increasingly large proportion of older people worldwide, especially in developing nations with continued pressure to limit fertility and shrink families.

Traditionally, care for older adults has been the responsibility of family members and was provided within the extended family home. Increasingly in modern societies, care is now provided by state or charitable institutions. The reasons for this change include shrinking families, longer life expectancy and geographical dispersion of families. Although these changes have affected European and North American countries first, they are now increasingly affecting Asian countries.

In most western countries, care facilities for older adults are residential family care homes, freestanding assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs). A family care home is a residential home with support and supervisory personnel by an agency, organization, or individual that provides room and board, personal care and habilitation services in a family environment for at least two and no more than six persons.

Due to the wide variety of elderly care needs and cultural perspectives on the elderly, there is a broad range of practices and institutions across different parts of the world. For example, in many Asian countries whereby younger generations often care for the elderly due to societal norms, government-run elderly care is seldom used in developing countries throughout Asia due to a lack of sufficient taxation necessary to provide an adequate standard of care, whilst privately-run elderly care in developing countries throughout Asia is relatively uncommon due to the stigma of exhibiting insufficient filial piety, having a relatively relaxed work–life interface and insufficient funding from family to pay for privately-run elderly care. However, institutional elderly care is increasingly adopted across various Asian societies, as the work–life interface becomes more constrained and people with increasing incomes being able to afford the cost of elderly care.

There are major discrepancies within elder care. An important issue to acknowledge is who is taking care of the elderly primarily. This task in many households comes down to members of the family. The issue that stems from the assumption that family will take care of the elderly is in many households the time spent with elder care can take away from time that would be spent providing for the family financially. This leads to larger disparities within socioeconomic class with the elderly.